Foundation for American Innovation Senior Fellow Evan Swarztrauber, a former FCC policy adviser to Chairman Ajit Pai, urged the Senate on Thursday night to “quickly confirm” Republican FTC nominee Mark Meador. President Donald Trump announced plans in December, before taking office, to nominate Meador, a former antitrust staffer for Senate Antitrust Subcommittee ranking member Mike Lee, R-Utah, to the FTC seat of then-Chairwoman Lina Khan (see 2412100073). For Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress “to succeed in their goals of supercharging the economy and unleashing technological innovation, America needs a strong [FTC, and] Meador’s confirmation would deliver a Republican majority at the agency,” Swarztrauber said in an opinion piece for the Washington Reporter. “Meador’s impressive resume makes him the perfect candidate for the moment,” including his role as a Lee aide in writing legislation “to break Google’s monopoly over the advertising technology market.” Meador “understands well the challenges posed by Big Tech, where consumer harms are often shrouded in opaque terms of service and ‘freemium’ business models that hide monopoly rents behind sleek user interfaces,” Swarztrauber said.
Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., asked the FCC Thursday to investigate foreign entities of concern (FEOC) “that broadcast on U.S. airwaves to determine if those entities pose a significant national security risk to the American public, and use existing FCC authorities to deter future partnerships between FEOCs and television networks.” Banks and Scott cited a trio of ads for Chinese retail application Temu during the 2024 Super Bowl broadcast where the company “offered $15 million worth of giveaways on their questionable products. Temu is known to flood the United States with cheap goods produced by forced labor in [China] while exploiting the de-minimis loophole to avoid enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act.” U.S. broadcasters “should not platform [Chinese Communist Party] -linked companies who actively violate U.S. laws and do not comply with the same standards as U.S. manufacturers,” the senators said in a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. They noted that the U.S. Trade Representative’s office has repeatedly placed Temu's China-based parent company, Pinduoduo, on its notorious markets list for intellectual property theft, “copyright piracy, and selling counterfeit goods.”
SpaceX's temporary loss of a $100 million contract with Ontario over a U.S./Canada tariff fight could be a harbinger of satellite communications services increasingly enmeshed in U.S. trade disputes. Some see non-U.S. satellite operators potentially benefiting from the Starlink contract episode.
Like staff at nearly every agency in Washington, FCC employees seem nervously waiting for the next moves of the Donald Trump administration and Elon Musk, even as they hunker down and continue doing their jobs, industry sources tell us. The FCC also appears to have taken further steps to comply with the White House’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts after an initial wave of announcements immediately after Chairman Brendan Carr took office.
Paramount Global's restrictive trademark on the word "slime" is a Communications Act violation, toy putty and slime maker Mack Toys said Wednesday (24-275). In a 69-page complaint, Mack said that Paramount not letting it advertise its toy slime products using that word undermines the Communications Act's Section 214 requirement that the FCC "ensure non-discriminatory access to communication services." Mack said Paramount's "slime" monopolization "is emblematic of broader anticompetitive practices that harm small businesses." It said the FCC needs to erect structural remedies preventing greater monopolistic behavior if the Paramount/Skydance Media deal is allowed to go through. Mack said requiring Paramount to drop its exclusive rights to the word "would restore fair competition in toy, digital app, and media markets."
The FCC doesn’t have plans to withdraw or revise its Form 395-B data collection despite the agency opting not to defend language in the order recognizing nonbinary gender (see 2502040061), the FCC told the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a letter in docket 24-60219 Wednesday. “There therefore remains a live controversy between the parties over the order’s lawfulness.” The letter appears to be a response to concerns judges raised during oral argument Tuesday that the FCC could act to withdraw or moot the case while the court is working on an opinion. Broadcast attorneys told us this week they were concerned the court might opt not to rule on the order in the wake of the FCC’s decision not to defend part of it.
FCC rules against payola bar radio broadcasters from receiving payment for more favorable airplay, even in the form of reduced fees for live performances at station-run concerts, warned the FCC Enforcement Bureau in an advisory Thursday. “Some radio stations appear to be violating the FCC's prohibition on Payola by surreptitiously forcing musicians to choose between (1) performing for free (or for reduced fees) at station events or (2) losing out on valuable radio airplay,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a post on X. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., sent a letter to Carr last week asking the FCC to look into the practice (see 2502040062). The advisory said the agency will hold stations that report to record-charting services -- and are thus more susceptible to payola -- to a higher standard on policing the activities of employees than it would a station with an all-news format. If the licensee of such a reporting station “does nothing more than require its employees to execute affidavits stating that they will not violate laws and regulations prohibiting payola,” that could fall short of the “reasonable diligence” the agency requires, the advisory said. Payola is also against the U.S. criminal code, so violating the rules “can subject the violator to criminal penalties of a fine of up to $10,000 or imprisonment of up to one year, or both.” The FCC “notes that licensees play a critical role in preventing payola, and the Commission’s enforcement staff will consider investigating substantive allegations of payola that come to its attention.”
The FCC’s investigation of CBS and demand for interview transcripts (see 2502050063) aren’t unprecedented because of the previous administration’s treatment of Fox’s WTXF Philadelphia, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Thursday in an interview with Fox and Friends. “When the government's been weaponized in your favor, it feels like discrimination when all of a sudden there's even-handed treatment,” Carr said, calling critics of the CBS investigation “the radical left.” Under former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC opened a proceeding on WTXF’s license renewal in response to a petition from the Media and Democracy Project. MAD’s petition argued that a court finding that Fox had aired false news about the 2020 election was sufficient basis for the FCC to hold a hearing on its license. The open proceeding held up WTXF’s license renewal for a year and a half, but the FCC didn’t hold a hearing, act against WTXF or act on repeated requests from MAD to include documents and court filings from defamation cases against Fox in the record. Rosenworcel rejected the MAD petition as one of her last acts as chairwoman (see 2501160081). Though Carr’s FCC resurrected the news distortion complaint against CBS and other complaints against ABC and NBC, he let the dismissal of the petition against WTXF stand (see 2501220059). “A lot of people that have been on a sort of upper road of a two-tiered system of government, and what I'm here to do is apply the law evenly,” Carr said. Former Fox and Disney lobbyist Preston Padden, who supported the MAD petition, clapped back. “Carr’s comment is pure BS,” he told us. “I believe he is pursuing the CBS complaint for one reason -- Trump wants him to.” Fox didn't comment.
FCC claims that Telnyx didn't do enough to stop apparent scam calls made using its voice service platform are factually wrong, the company said Wednesday. Telnyx said it "has done everything and more than the FCC has required for Know-Your-Customer and customer due diligence procedures." FCC commissioners this week approved a proposed $4.5 million fine against the company; it was the first commission-level action under Chairman Brendan Carr (see 2502040065). In a statement, Telnyx said the FCC traditionally has expected providers to take reasonable steps to detect and block illegal traffic, and now the agency wants to impose fines "for limited unlawful calling activity that Telnyx not only did not originate but swiftly blocked within a matter of hours." It said the agency is trying to introduce "an unprecedented zero-tolerance requirement on providers through enforcement action, in the absence of any defined rules informing providers what is expected of them."
Federated Wireless representatives met with aides to FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington to call for rules that would facilitate deploying AI “and other advanced tools” to make the citizens broadband radio service band more efficient for users. The representatives discussed Federated’s “support for codification of the processes that are being used to manage CBRS spectrum access” and “greater harmonization of the CBRS rules with adjacent bands,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 17-258.